Is your email communication secure?

You would have to be living off the grid to not be aware of the name Snowden by now, and if you were living off the grid you probably wouldn’t care. For the rest of us that are plugged in we are still seeing changes in the internet and how communication is done. Most major internet companies are in process of moving toward encryption for all facets of communications. In a previous post I discussed how Google and others had moved to HTTPS as the default protocol when performing a search, now those same companies are expanding their encryption efforts to email communication. Using email encryption can be more complex and bring additional challenges. One of these challenges is that both the sender and recipient must support the encryption technology.

Google published data this week that shows 65% of messages sent by Gmail users are encrypted when delivered, which is almost double the number from December, 39%. Yahoo, Facebook and AOL have all started to encrypt their mail as well and Microsoft announced that it would be implementing the same technology in its free email services at MSN, Hotmail and Outlook domains. The same data showed almost a complete lack of encryption (less than 1%) in email communications with Verizon and Comcast domains. Providing encrypted communication is essential for these companies to maintain and grow their user base. Who is going to use your service if they don’t feel secure that what they communicate is private?

Are you ready to start using encrypted email?

Barracuda Spam Firewall and Barracuda Email Security Service both provide access to Barracuda Email Encryption Service for no additional cost. The Barracuda Email Security Service can automatically accept incoming mail communication using TLS encryption and allows the admin to set policies for encrypting outbound mail. The Barracuda Spam Firewall allows more granular policies based on both incoming and outgoing mail. For both hardware/virtual and cloud service platforms policies can be set based on mail content, preventing leakage of sensitive credit card, social security or medical data. We view this as a feature as an integral part of your overall security portfolio, and with our policy of no per user/ per feature fees you get all this included with your current Energize Update subscription. So what are you waiting for? Go get your encryption on with Barracuda Spam Firewall and Barracuda Email Security Service.